Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri is “at the heart of the constant discussions” aimed at forming a new government, his aide MP Ali Hassan Khalil said Friday.

“He is very worried over the political forces’ laxity in forming the government,” Khalil added, following a parliamentary session.

Parliament on Friday approved a $246 million World Bank loan agreement aimed at supporting families impacted by Lebanon's near two-year-long crippling economic crisis that has been aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

As the session got underway at the UNESCO Palace in Beirut, parliament's temporary venue, large crowds of protesters spread in different areas of Beirut and outside the UNESCO Palace, raising different demands.

Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri received at the Center House on Friday the American Ambassador to Lebanon, Dorothy Shea, Hariri’s press office said in a statement.

Caretaker Social Affairs and Tourism Minister Ramzi Musharrafieh affirmed on Friday that his recent meeting with Syrian officials in Damascus on the refugee file were “positive and encouraging.”

He said the “discussions with Syrian officials during his recent visit to Damascus were more than positive and very encouraging,” and that “all the ministers he met with, expressed their full readiness to work with Lebanon to activate the file of the return of displaced persons.”

Mohammed Zakaria has lived in a plastic tent in eastern Lebanon's Bekaa Valley for almost as long as war has raged in his native Syria.

He and his family fled bombings in 2012, thinking it would be a short, temporary stay. His hometown of Homs was under siege, and subject to a ferocious Syrian military campaign. He didn't even bring his ID with him.

Caretaker Interior Minister Mohammed Fahmi sounded the alarm about the impact of Lebanon’s crippling economic crisis on the performance and response of security forces.

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) submitted its twelfth annual report to the United Nations Secretary-General and the Government of Lebanon, the STL said in a press release.

Lebanon's caretaker energy minister Thursday warned the country would plunge into "total darkness" at the end of the month if no money was secured to buy fuel for power stations.

Power cuts have been common in Lebanon ever since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war, forcing Lebanese to pay a second power bill to private generators for three to 12 hours each day during the outages.

France and the United States hit out at Lebanon's warring politicians on Thursday, with Paris saying they were failing to help the country as it slid towards "total collapse".

Al-Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc MP Mohammed Hajjar said Thursday that PM-designate Saad Hariri is ready to meet with President Michel Aoun on the government formation process if the latter has something new on the file

“The PM-designate could head to Baabda if anything new happened,” said Hajjar.